Ant International is collaborating on the launch of Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard for agentic commerce that covers the entire shopping journey: from discovery to purchase to after-sales support. The UCP establishes a common language for agents and systems to work together across all consumer, business and payment provider interfaces to facilitate commerce. So, instead of requiring unique connections for each agent, UCP allows all agents to interact easily.
UCP is designed to work across industries and is compatible with existing industry protocols such as Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). Powered by UCP, AI interfaces — such as the Gemini app or AI mode in Google Search — are evolving. They will soon allow users to finalize their purchases directly within the chat interface.
When a user expresses a purchasing intention, the AI intuitively understands their needs and offers a personalized selection of products. With a simple click on “Pay with GPay”, the user can verify their order and finalize the payment without leaving the conversation. Shopping becomes faster, simpler and more fluid than ever.
Ant International’s agentic commerce solutions aim to provide merchants with three critical capabilities to thrive in AI-powered commerce: Control over algorithmic engagement: In agentic commerce, engagement shifts from human navigation to AI-mediated decision-making. Ant International gives merchants control: they can define how their brand, offers, loyalty programs and subscriptions are represented and executed by AI agents. Brands can thus automate engagement while guaranteeing a customer experience that reflects their identity and the excellence of their service.
A seamless, native experience for agents: Ant International leverages its deep expertise in alternative payment methods (APM) and its close ties with leading digital wallets to develop agentic payment solutions based on APM. With the support of Antom EasySafePay, users can stay fully in their AI experience throughout the purchase and payment journey. Trust throughout the agentic buying journey: Trust is fundamental in agentic commerce, where the user delegates purchasing power to AI.
Ant International ensures that user intent is verifiable, transactions are traceable, and each stakeholder’s responsibility is clearly established throughout the payment cycle. EasySafePay leverages multi-party computing (MPC)-based AI risk management and mobile device security systems to identify and block fraudulent transactions, while providing a money-back guarantee to payment partners in the event of account takeover fraud. Ant International focuses on providing payment services to merchants, fintechs and banks.
Its international payment services, global account, AI solutions and other fintech technologies now cover more than 200 markets, connecting 1.8 billion user accounts and 150 million merchants, particularly in emerging Asia-Pacific markets. To guarantee secure, interoperable and automated transactions between intelligent agents, Ant International is actively investing in the co-development of new agentic protocols with its industrial partners. Other ongoing collaborations include Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and pilot programs to test card transaction capabilities for AI agents with international card networks.